José Mourinho probably cannot repeat the Manchester United tactics from October’s 0-0 draw at Liverpool, in the latest clash with a manager who bested him in a pivotal 2013 game
Football changed in April 2013. Jürgen Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund beat José Mourinho’s Real Madrid and Jupp Heynckes’s Bayern Munich beat Tito Vilanova’s Barcelona in the semi-finals of the Champions League and the hegemony of a Spanish model of football, based on possession or its opposite, was shattered by a series of rampaging German counterattacks.
The lessons of that fortnight remain highly relevant to Sunday’s meeting at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Liverpool, Mourinho and Klopp. Or at least that is the convenient theory. Nothing is ever as neat and simple as that, and by the following season Carlo Ancelotti’s Real were devastating Pep Guardiola’s Bayern by breaking with rapid efficiency.
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